LOCKDOWN

8 days to go before WYD, we began a period of time I like to call “lockdown.” See, the CYS house became somewhat like a well-furnished prison during that week. For three days I did not leave the house as I along with a few others, practiced and practiced and practiced for our catechesis site. The music needed so much preparation, I was really quite exasperated at the process! We spent the Wednesday traveling to our catechesis site (they let us out of the prison!) to check out the venue and rehearse a bit there to have a feel for the area.

Friday before WYD began, we again were let out of the house to see an unveiling at the Cathedral. It was absolutely stunning - the unveiling was of a painting called “Our Lady of the Southern Cross, Help of Christians” I will post a picture of the art work, because words could never do it justice. The small crowd that had gathered for the event let out a collective sigh of astonishment and admiration for the lovely scene painted in honor of Mary, the Mother of God.

On Saturday, we were finally winding down the preparation and gearing up for the actual coming of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. I went that day and met up with Katie, who you may have heard me mention before - she went to Millikin, but we didn’t know each other until we both ended up in Sydney to study last year. She has returned Down Under to begin her post-graduate studies at the University of New South Wales, which isn’t too far from where I live! It was nice to catch up with her - seeing a familiar face is always a good thing!

That night our house began to fill with pilgrims as two Filipinos from Brisbane came to stay with us, along with Carrie, who is a new friend from Kansas City! Carrie and I had lots to talk about because she spent a year here in Australia traveling around on a NET team, so she could certainly relate to the various trials and tribulations I am going through. It was really nice to have someone say, “I understand, because I’ve been there.”

She stayed with us for a few days until her pilgrim group arrived from the States, so it was nice to have her around! I ran into her a couple times throughout WYD week (that’s the funny thing about it - there were 300,000 pilgrims milling around at any given time and I kept bumping into people I know! Providence made visible.) and I do hope I see her again in the States! We’ve decided to get together at some point to have ice cream. How far is KC from Indy? It wouldn’t be too far to drive for an ice cream date, would it?

We also got to greet about 120 pilgrims from Northwest Australia that day as well because they all stayed at St. Anthony’s Primary School, which is on the same grounds as our house. They were really lovely people, and most of them had never been to Sydney, had never been out of their part of the world, which is a remote and exotic part of the world from the sounds of it! Some of the group were from a place called Balgo, which is a 12 hour drive from any major point of civilization. Right smack in the middle of the desert they said. Can you imagine being out there! It would be neat to see, but would it really be neat to live there? It would be interesting, that’s for sure.

We spent Sunday at a Scalabrinian event, and even though an entire day of my life was consumed with selling WYD merchandise at their gathering, I have no idea who the Scalabrinians are or what it means to be one…there were lots of non-English speaking people there, though. Italians, Mexicans, Brazilians, Puerto Ricans, other South Americans….probably others I missed. It was quite a big event, but yeah, I’m still not sure what it was all about. There we were anyway.

Now in between all these things I was busily making rosary after rosary from twine, and then tagging them with a little card that said my name, and had my email. By the end of it I had about 50 and these I gave out throughout the week of WYD to people I met and made a connection with, in hopes that through it we would stay in touch. At this point, I’ve only heard of a couple people, but that’s ok, because even if I never hear from most of the people, at least I’ve given them a symbol of our faith, in hopes they will use it and better their relationship with God. The exchange of information is really secondary to that!

The next day, with 1 day to go before WYD began, our pilgrimage began…

Stay posted, the good part's too come!